So you finally took the plunge and bought a Mac. Whether it's a MacBook, Mac Pro, Mac mini, an Air, or iMac--it's still your Mac, and it runs the Macintosh operating system, OS X. But what do you do with your Mac after you turn it on? How about setting up an email account, video-chatting with your relatives, or playing your favorite songs and movies? You need a book like My New Mac to make everything easy.

In the Lion edition of the best-selling My New Mac, you'll find 56 simple projects that will have you doing useful things right away--like surfing the Internet, sending email, listening to music, and playing with your digital photos. Fun stuff, if you know how to do it.

You'll also learn how to:

Connect to the Internet, chat with your friends, and listen to online radio stations

Wallace Wang

Wallace Wang is the author of numerous best-selling computer books including Steal This Computer Book, Steal This File Sharing Book, My New Mac, and The Book of Nero (all No Starch Press). He is also a successful standup comic who has appeared on A&E's "Evening at the Improv" and appears regularly at the Riviera Comedy Club in Las Vegas, Nevada.

MacWorld said, "Highly recommended for newbies, and switchers." I would add, "Or anyone who wants to learn by doing something that they have not done before on their Mac by following clear, simple, and complete steps."

My New Mac, Lion Edition is divided into seven parts. It contains 56 chapters and each one contains simple clear steps for doing something.

For example Chapter 13 is Storing Files on a CD or DVD. It begins with describing What You Will Be Using. It continues with Buying Disks. Then Erasing a Read/Write disk if you won't be buying one. Then Choosing Files to Burn, and how to Create a Burn Folder, and the alternative Burn Files Directly to Disk. Finally, like the other chapters, it ends with useful advice, Additional Ideas For … Burning CDs and DVDs.

People generally remember better when reading and doing something than when just reading about it. Reading and doing what is in My New Mac, Lion Edition would be a good way to lean to use a Mac, and it would be even more useful if, except for the Basics you use it to learn to do the things as you have a reason for doing them. That, is use it as a learning and reference tool, and look for the things you want to learn when you want to learn them.

The seven Parts are useful in finding what you are looking for such as Part 6: Surfing and Sharing on the Internet. When the seven Parts do not locate what you are looking for so easily, there is a fine index. For example, "foreign languages" in the index points you to chapter 26: Typing Foreign Languages which in located in Part 3: Making Life Easier.

The author, Wallace Wang, does not pretend to cover everything there is to know about a Mac, but it is a very good start. I especially liked his last chapter The Next Step which contains the advice, "You don't have to learn everything about your Macintosh, because the point of getting a Macintosh is that it helps you get your work done as simply and easily as possible. Once you have accomplished that, learning anything more about your Macintosh may be nice, but it is ultimately irrelevant . You want to spend your time constructively." He also writes, "As long as you are having fun and being productive in your life, it doesn't really matter how much or how little you know about computers."